The Belt and Road through Eurasia: Who Wins and How?

China’s Belt and Road infrastructure development initiative will have its winners and losers. But for now, Beijing is trying to bolster international support for the project, which will link its western provinces to Europe, by keeping some aspects of the specific routing of rail corridors ambiguous.

China has presented maps of the Belt and Road depicting the simultaneous development of many routes through different countries. This ambiguity of precisely where and when routes will emerge has been useful for keeping all countries in the region engaged. Yet, this strategy is unlikely to endure for long once the megaproject moves from the PR to the engineering phase.